In the News

Profiles in precision medicine Advances in DNA testing and gene editing have given people choices that would have been impossible a few decades ago. Here, in their own words (including Dr. Paula Amato), are the stories of four people confronted with these dilemmas.

CBS's 60 Minutes included Shoukhrat Mitalipov and his groundbreaking work in their segment about CRISPR highlighting our efforts to use
CRISPR to prevent disease by correcting genes in human embryos.

CBS's 60 Minutes Overtime included a segment with our physician collaborator, Dr. Paula Amato, whom discusses the ethical reasons of pursuing technologies that may be used to prevent disease in future generations.

A ground breaking discovery by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, Ph.D.,
was reported in Nature —the successful removal of a lethal genetic
defect in human embryos. The breakthrough is the initial confirmation that a
dangerous genetic defect can in theory be erased.

New research provides key insight about mitochondrial
replacement therapy

A new discovery may unlock the answer to a vexing scientific
question: How to conduct mitochondrial replacement therapy, a new gene-therapy
technique, in such a way that safely prevents the transmission of harmful mitochondrial
gene mutations from mothers to their children.

New Technique could increase success of infertility treatment

Families struggling with infertility or a genetic predisposition for debilitating mitochondrial diseases may someday benefit from a new breakthrough led by scientists at OHSU and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Stat: In the Lab

365 days: Nature's 10

Human Cloning at Last: Science

Researchers announced they had derived stem cells from
cloned human embryos, a long-awaited research coup that Science's editors chose
as a runner-up for Breakthrough of the Year..
Read the article on Science

The Top Ten Science Stories of 2013: Discover

This Year's Biggest Discoveries in Science: National Geographic

TIME Health Care 50

The biologist from Oregon Health &Science University
shocked people in 2017 when he repaired a genetic mutation causing heart
disease in dozens of human embryos. (The embryos were destroyed as per ethical
requirements of the experiment.) He used a controversial gene-editing technique
called CRISPR that has yet to be proven safe and effective for treating human
disease, and critics questioned his results. But this year, Mitalipov defended
his findings after re-analyzing the DNA from the embryonic cells, and other
groups have reported similar results using CRISPR to repair the mutation in
mouse embryos. Mitalipov says he also tested the technique with inherited
mutations that cause other diseases, with similar repair success. He sees his
studies as the first step toward IVF gene therapy, in which researchers can
repair inherited genetic diseases in IVF embryos before they are implanted in
the womb. —Alice Park